Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are used in a large number of consumer devices. Such displays typically comprise an LCD module and some electronics (e.g. a power supply, power buttons, etc.). The LCD module comprises an LCD panel (which includes one or more layers of LC material) and a backlight unit (because the LCD panel does not produce any illumination). The LCD module may be protected by a layer of strong glass/plastic which provides the display face of the device. The active area (i.e. the area which can be used to display information) of the LCD module does not extend right to the edges of the module and instead there is a small border around the active area, referred to as the ‘deadband’, which cannot be used to display anything (and typically looks black to a user). One reason for the deadband is that the backlight unit is larger (e.g. wider and longer) than the LCD panel.
For smaller displays, the size of the deadband (or non-display portion) of an LCD module is more significant, particularly as for some applications there is a desire to extend the display area as close as possible to the edges of a device (e.g. in a smaller form factor device such as a tablet computer, a mobile phone or smart watch). For a 5-6 inch LCD module (where this dimension is the length of the diagonal across the display), the deadband may be a border around the active part of the display which is around one millimeter wide.
The embodiments described below are not limited to implementations which solve any or all of the disadvantages of known LCD modules and LCD displays.